Page 14 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

I used all my tentacles to yank myself across the floor and back into the control seat. I curled four appendages around the top of the panel, anchoring myself. My eyes searched desperately for a way out of this mess.

The destination marker blinked at me, nowhere near our original goal.

What I’d feared moments ago.

Crashing at near the center of the Northern continent.

No blasted water in sight.

“Cyro!” Vantor’s voice rang through the cacophony, full of the sharp precision I had grown to appreciate and now rely on. “What is our projected trajectory?”

I pressed a sucker to one flashing button. Autopilot.

The vessel lurched, seemed to stop, then it hurled forward again.

“Firmly the northern continent now. Centralized. An easy distance to a body of water by ship.” An impossible distance if we must cover it without the ship, I added mentally. I pressed my tentacles into the soft console surface to stabilize myself. “If I cannot reestablish control, we are going to crash on this barbaric, horrible planet!”

I could see Vantor’s bioluminescence reacting, a series of disciplined pulses communicating his own assessment of the threat level. His skin danced with cobalt and aqua. Flashes of sky appeared every few heartbeats. He was keeping it together. I wasn’t. I admired his methodical nature despite the dread knotted in my gut. My heart raced—not with the thrill of exploration I’d known on previous journeys, but with the palpable weight of impending doom.

“Kalith, did you run diagnostics yet?” I tried to hold onto authority, tried not to sound like I was fracturing under pressure.

“Systems are fritzing. I’ll have to check everything out manually,” Kalith responded quickly, his tentacles reaching in all directions, ripping off access panels and getting to work.

Vantor was strapping down a medical pod, along with saltwater tanks and several emergency breathing units.

I was unable to move. I should help somehow, but I felt adhered to the chair.

A shower of sparks fell from the ceiling.

The ship moaned.

Screamed in pain.

Vibrated as if caught in the throes of death.

The overhead lights surged, sending us into darkness for several beats of my three hearts.

The vessel gave several, body-bruising spasms.

“Secure loose equipment!” Vantor shouted, his vocalization cutting through my internal chaos. “Cyro, move!” He commanded me. Me! I was the leader of this mission, not him.

His tentacles moved with brisk discipline, gathering and fastening equipment down to avert the mayhem that could follow. My stomach churned as I wondered if we would be meeting Earth’s creatures not as explorers, but as intergalactic collateral damage. Flarking madness… we weren’t supposed to meet any Earthlings at all. Not on purpose or by accident.

And I still wasn’t shifting into action. Still wasn’t taking control of the situation.

“At this speed and angle, our chances of survival or no better than ten percent,” Kalith flowed over to me, the umber and sunlight of his skin was highly pigmented, a sign that even he—our certified jokester—couldn’t make light of the situation. He locked eyes with me. The way the slitted wave of his gaze stared at me, I knew he was afraid. Kalith was never afraid. Typically, he laughed when things took a turn for the worst. He found a solidifying sliver of dark humor to help him hold onto sanity. If he looked full of fear, real fear, then we were facing horrible odds. “We need to enact crash protocol.”

“We will not crash!” I spat out. “Just keep running the diagnostics, Kalith. Now!”

My stubborn denial versus the truth seemed to hang in the air between us, then it began to battle for dominance.

The vessel’s hues were a dizzying kaleidoscope of color now.

Its sharp keening cracked around the edges.

My perfect record was going up in smoke along with the melting circuitry.

“This was not supposed to be a journey of failure!” I shouted, body pulsing with harsh blasts of blinding red. Anger twisted through me, not directed at my crewmates, but toward my inadequacies, my poor leadership, my fear that we’d land on this horrible planet and never get home again.